As this picture of social structure had become clearer in my mind, my fantasies about hitting it off with Liza Taylor Smith had grown dimmer. From what I could tell, she sat atop the very pinnacle of popularity in our grade. She was a cheerleader. She was hot. She had certain characteristics the other guys liked to talk about. Need I say more?
Me, well, I didn’t really know where I fit in. I didn’t have an established clique of friends like everyone else. I knew everyone’s name, and people seemed to like me fine. But I sat at a different lunch table every day, rotating around the room like I was trying to win a musical chairs tournament. After school, I floated in and out of circles of students as they stood on the sidewalk waiting for their rides. I didn’t have a place. And therefore I didn’t have the status to impress someone like Liza Taylor Smith.
“Here,” said Lauren Baker, dropping the note on my desk.
We were getting up to leave Spanish class at the end of the period. I raised my eyebrows, confused. She nodded her head at the note as if to say, I am leaving this with you, but you deserve no further explanation from me concerning its contents. Read it for yourself.
I looked down at what was lying on my desk. Based on its dimensions—slightly larger than a credit card, about a centimeter tall—I guessed it was a standard-sized sheet of notebook paper that had been folded once, twice, and then thrice. On the faceup side was written a single word in light blue glitter-gel ink: Josh.
I swiped the note off my desk and stuffed it in the front pocket of my capri-length shorts.
As I walked to my locker between Spanish and Honors Biology, I wondered what could be written in this note. I had never been given a note at school before, let alone a note from a girl like Lauren Baker, who was both hot and popular. What could it possibly say? What would she have to tell me that was so important it had to be passed, quietly, almost secretly, in a folded sheet of notebook paper with my name written on it?
Chapter 7
I waited to read the note until after I got home from school. I didn’t want to read it in public in case its contents turned out to be, you know, emotionally disturbing or something. I went into my bedroom and shut the door, then sat down at my desk, unfolding the piece of paper one crease at a time, my hands shaking almost as much as they had when Mr. Glick popped that quiz. Sparkly blue handwriting took up the entire page. I scanned to the end, expecting to see a signature that said Lauren. After all, Lauren Baker was the one who had handed me the note. She must have written it, too, right?
But no. It said no such thing. In fact, there was not one but two names written at the end of the letter: Liza Taylor.
Liza Taylor? Had written me a letter? Me? Josh Sundquist? There was no way this was real. It was too good to be true. I looked up from my desk and out the window, and then at the door, as if I expected someone to jump out and say that I had been pranked.
But the door remained closed and my room remained quiet. I took a deep breath and dove into the note, savoring each word, each sparkly handwritten letter.
Dear Josh, it began. As I read, my mind kept interrupting me with screams of Is this really happening?
The letter went on to explain that she knew we had not met yet.
(Um, seriously? She knows who I am?)
But that she was really looking forward to meeting me because, see, her Bible study leader from Young Life had told her all about me, about how I had been diagnosed with cancer as a child, how I had lost my leg.
(Wait, what? She already knows my secret? All hope is lost!)
Her Bible study leader also told her how my faith in God had gotten me through such a difficult time, and how that faith continued to sustain me today.
Liza Taylor concluded by saying she was inspired and impressed by my faith, and it just really encouraged her to know that, like, another one of her classmates had such a great relationship with God. She hoped we would be able to meet soon.
It was signed simply Liza Taylor.
I read the entire note again and again, soaking up every word. It was like taking a shower under drops of bliss. All the happiness washed over me, soaking through to the bone. Liza Taylor had written me! She wanted to meet me! She was impressed with my faith!
Not only that, but she already knew that I had one leg—which I was a little weirded out to discover, since most people at school didn’t know yet—and even with this knowledge, she still wanted to meet me. My disability did not reduce her opinion of me; in fact, based on the note, it seemed like it actually made her think more highly of me.
That Liza Taylor was in a Bible study was itself a shocking development. Liza Taylor Smith was a Christian! Just like me! Which meant… I could date her! She could be my first real girlfriend!
No sooner had the thought entered my mind, however, than the Rule returned to smack me in the face: No dating until you are sixteen years old.
Mom and Dad had made an exception and allowed me to date Sarah Stevens because she was a family friend. They knew her. She and I had grown up together. But they didn’t know Liza Taylor Smith. That she was in a Bible study would not be enough to convince them. To Mom and Dad, she was just some random girl from public school, meaning she was most likely a corrupting seductress or closet Wiccan, Bible study member or not.
I sighed and stared out the window. I was so close! So close to not only meeting Liza Taylor Smith, but dating her! I mean, it said it right there in the letter. She wanted to meet me.
That’s when I got an idea. I might not be allowed to go on dates, plural, but maybe I could persuade Mom and Dad to let me go on just one. Specifically, to the homecoming dance. It was coming up in a couple of weeks. And since homecoming was a special occasion, closely supervised by chaperones, maybe they’d make an exception to the no-dating rule and let me attend.
I suggested as much at dinner, and they agreed to pray about it. That was a start, at least.
The next evening I brought it up again.
“So, what about homecoming?”
“We can discuss it after dinner,” said Dad.
I was eager to hear their answer. “Why not now?”
Mom and Dad glanced at each other.
“Not in front of your younger brothers,” said Dad, nodding at Matthew and Luke.
It wasn’t until dinner had been finished, the dishes cleared, and my brothers ushered safely out of earshot into the family room with the door closed that I got my answer.
Dad began, “I’m sorry, Joshua, but we have decided not to make an exception”—my shoulders slumped and I let out an exasperated sigh—“to our rule. You’re not allowed to date until you’re sixteen. And that includes school dances.”
“But why does it matter? It’s just a dance. I can ask some girl…” Obviously, I would not be asking some girl—no, I wanted to ask a very specific girl with three words in her name, but no use telling Mom and Dad that. “… as a friend.”
“We just don’t think it’s safe,” Mom said.
“Safe? Like I’m gonna pull a muscle while dancing?”
“No.” She looked uncomfortable.
“What then?”
Dad jumped in. “We’ve heard that a lot of girls get… um…”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Well…” Dad was struggling.
“Yes?” I demanded.
“Pregnant. At the homecoming dance, that is.”
Mom’s eyelids widened slightly at the mere mention of the p-word, the ultimate embarrassment for any Christian parent, a sin that brought irreversible shame upon any good churchgoing family.
“Oh, come on!” I said. “Pregnant? You think I’m going to have sex at the dance?”
“Keep your voice down, please,” said Mom, nodding her head at the door to the family room.
“No,” said Dad. “We do not think you will. But we don’t want to put you in a place of temptation, either.”
“A place of temptation? Dad, there are going to be, like, hundreds of kids there. How could I possibl
y get someone pregnant?”
“Maybe before or after—”
“I can’t drive!” I interrupted. “You are going to have to drive me to pick her up and drop her off anyway. In between that we’ll be at a dance chaperoned by, like, an army of teachers and parents!”
“True,” Dad conceded. “I guess you will be supervised.…”
Mom gave him a look.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t allowed to go,” added Dad, returning his tone from thoughtful back to this-is-our-final-decision.
“Dad, this is completely absurd.” I directed my arguments at Dad, because he was the less strict one. If someone budged, it would be him, not Mom. “You were the one who explained to me where babies come from, remember? I don’t recall learning anything about babies coming from people dancing. It’s not going to just accidentally happen at the dance.”
“Joshua, you are too young to understand, but hormones can be very powerful.”
“Explain it. Explain to me how my date could get pregnant.”
“Teenagers with hormones can be very creative,” he said. “I don’t know, exactly. Maybe in a classroom or something. You sneak off with your date—”
“Are you being serious right now? This isn’t a joke?”
Dad put his hand up in a stop sign. “That’s enough. Our decision is final.”
“Ugghhh! You guys are ridiculous!” I pulled my chair from the table as violently as I could and hopped over to my crutches, which were leaning against the wall. I stormed out of the room and went to my bedroom and slammed the door. Sliding open my nightstand drawer, I lifted out the note from Liza Taylor. Then I crumpled it up and threw it on the floor.
Chapter 8
A few days after I had to miss homecoming, I was standing outside at the end of the school day, waiting for Mom to pick me up, when I was approached by a college-aged guy wearing a trucker hat and cowboy shirt.
“What’s up, bro?” he said, offering a fist bump. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Josh.”
“Word. They call me Miller.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“So listen, you should come out to club tonight.” He handed me a photocopied flier. “It’s gonna be mad fun.”
“Cool, thanks.”
He walked away to find his next target. I examined the flier. It was a hand-drawn map to someone’s house that read YOUNG LIFE CLUB, 7 PM.
My mind pinged, alerting me to a connection between this flier and Liza Taylor Smith. What was the connection? I thought for a second. Oh yeah, her note! She had said she heard about me from her Young Life leader. Bingo. My chance to finally meet Liza Taylor had literally just been handed to me.
I’d never been to Young Life, but I’d heard of it. It was a Christian organization, sort of a youth group for public schools, led by local college students and other volunteers. The religious affiliation made it an easy sell to Mom and Dad.
That night, Dad dropped me off at the address on Miller’s map. I got out of the van and spotted Liza Taylor almost instantly. As promised, she was holding court with a circle of guys, all upperclassmen, all football players.
I didn’t want to interrupt, so instead of butting into the circle, I perched politely just behind Liza Taylor and waited to see if she would notice me.
I guess she eventually felt my breath on her neck or something, and she turned around to face me. I didn’t say anything, just waited for her to place me.
“You’re Josh Sundquist!”
“Yup!”
“I’m Liza Taylor!”
“I know,” I said.
“This is so cool! I didn’t know you came to Young Life!”
“It’s my first time.”
“Well, I’m so glad you’re here!”
Then, silence.
We were nearing the point at which a conversational pause turns into awkwardness when the door to the basement burst open and Miller stepped out.
“Everyone inside!” he bellowed.
“Okay, maybe I’ll talk to you after club?” Liza Taylor offered.
“Yeah, okay, cool,” I concurred.
Everyone funneled through the door into the basement. The furniture had been cleared out to provide ample floor seating. Everyone was gathering on the carpet with their groups of friends. Not having a crew of my own, I sat alone behind the farthest row in the back of the room. There’s a big difference between knowing everyone’s name and having a group of friends that counts you as one of its members.
Sitting on the floor with a prosthesis like mine is a little awkward. The hip joint doesn’t rotate in, so you can’t sit cross-legged as most people would in a crowded situation like this. You have to sort of recline, legs out in front of you, palms planted behind you. So you take up a conspicuous amount of floor space, which is especially annoying when you want to be invisible so no one notices that you are sitting by yourself.
Miller jumped up in front of the room.
“What’s up, club?” he screamed, drawing wild applause. He high-fived a few people in the front row.
“I thought we’d start off tonight with a little… competition!”
The promise of competition elicited another round of cheering.
“In honor of the fall holiday known as Thanksgiving, a.k.a. Turkey Day, we are going to have a pumpkin race!”
Although I wasn’t sure what a pumpkin race was, just the word “race” gave me an instant flashback to my childhood. When I was seven, I won a blue ribbon in the homeschool science fair for an experiment in which I proved that sprinting at my top speed (which the judges agreed, based on the data I had recorded, was indeed very fast) increased my heart rate compared to when I was walking. I loved to run races back when I had two legs.
“Here’s how it works. In a minute we’re gonna go back outside, and three competitors will line up at the starting line. They will run out and around the big tree in the front yard. First one across the finish line wins. Oh yeah—and they will be wearing one of these on each foot!”
He produced a pumpkin from the floor in front of him and held it aloft with one hand. The crowd went crazy. Holding the stem of the pumpkin with his other hand, he lifted off a circular top section that had been precut from the pumpkin and showed us the orangey innards through the hole.
“You just take your shoe and sock off and then”—he dropped the pumpkin stem and plunged that hand into the pumpkin—“put your foot right up in there!” He removed his hand to show that it was covered up to his forearm with pumpkin seeds and bright orange strings of pumpkin guts. An eww-that’s-so-gross laugh erupted in the basement. He set the pumpkin down.
“Now, tonight before club started, three people came up to me and they were like, ‘Miller, can I please be in tonight’s competition!’” This drew a knowing laugh. He pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. As he read each name, there was a smattering of applause.
“… and Josh Sundquist!”
Liza Taylor, who was sitting in the front, was one of the first to turn around and look at me. She smiled. I felt heat rising to my face.
I wondered how Miller knew my last name. Maybe he had gotten it from Liza Taylor. Or maybe from Liza Taylor’s Bible study leader.
But it didn’t really matter how he had found out, because he had—that was over and done with—and now I had to deal with this impossibly uncomfortable situation. Other than Liza Taylor, none of my classmates knew I was missing a leg. If they had known, they would not be clapping; they would be wondering, as I was now, whether it was possible to do this competition with a prosthesis on.
I considered it: I could take the shoe off my artificial leg, though doing so was quite difficult and usually required two hands or the use of a shoehorn. But even if I did get my shoe off, my ankle did not have enough forward flexion to fit through that hole in the top of the pumpkin. In the end, though, none of that mattered, because I simply couldn’t run with my prosthesis, pumpkin shoe or not, because the
artificial leg didn’t swing through fast enough.
I sat still by myself on the floor while everyone made their way outside for the race. I was about to break both my rules: I was going to be a burden on Miller by telling him I couldn’t compete, and I was going to identify myself as different when everyone started to wonder why I had dropped out.
Outside, the other two competitors were already clad in their pumpkin footwear. I shuffled over to Miller.
“You ready to gourd up, bro?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s what I need to talk to you about,” I said. I leaned my head toward the street, indicating we should turn to face away from the group. “I can’t do it. I, um… I have… I have an artificial leg.” I glanced down at my leg, which was covered with a pair of pants.
“Oh, bro, I’m so sorry,” said Miller. He did indeed look really sorry, though not so much sympathetic sorry as what-have-I-done horrified sorry.
“It’s all right. I lost it a long time ago.”
“No, I’m sorry about calling you up for this race. I had no idea.”
“It’s cool. Sorry I can’t, you know, compete.”
“If you want, you can be in another one of tonight’s skits. Next we’re doing a competition where you put panty hose over your head and have to eat a can of pumpkin pie filling through it—can you do that?”
Can I eat pumpkin pie? This was why I didn’t like for people to know I had a fake leg. Once they did, they assumed I wasn’t able to do much of anything.
“Sure.”
I looked back at the other students, all of whom were monitoring my conversation with Miller. Had they figured out my secret? I searched for Liza Taylor Smith’s face in the crowd, but I couldn’t find it.
We Should Hang Out Sometime Page 4
